Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document association device that associates documents with each other, a document association system, and a program.
Description of the Related Art
Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs have rapidly spread in recent years, and electronic documents are often viewed on these mobile devices. For example, information materials are often viewed on mobile devices during conferences. In some conferences, a main document main text) and auxiliary information materials are provided as conference materials, and the participants are sometimes requested to refer to the auxiliary information materials while reading the main text.
For example, in a case where a request for reference to a document B as another document (such as “for more detail, see document. B”) is issued while a user is viewing a document A, as shown in FIG. 19, a user opens the document B after closing the document A that has been open (FIG. 19B), or opens the document A and the document B at the same time (FIG. 19C). The user detects the relevant portion from the document B, and refers to the portion. After referring to the document B, the user closes the document B, and returns to viewing of the document A.
Since most mobile devices have small-sized displays, it is necessary for a user to often perform a scrolling operation or rescale characters when searching the document B for a portion to be referred to. As a result, the operation becomes complicated. Further, the portions to be referred to in the document B are not clearly specified in many cases. In such a case, searching the document B for a relevant portion is even more troublesome.
JP 2013-020437 A discloses an example of a technique for facilitating reference to another document from one document. In a case where each document has chapter numbers, and documents associated with one another are to be created, at least one document should be created, so that the format for the other documents is created in accordance with the already created document, and association information serving as information about links among the documents can be automatically generated.
Further, there is a technique for aiding an operation to manually create link information for associating a specific portion in a link destination document file with a specific portion in a link source document file (see JP 2000-035969 A), and there is a technique for generating links in accordance with operation information or the like received at the time of document viewing (see JP 2014-186644). Further, there is a technique for determining a document having a high degree of association with one document in accordance with document names and information about authors (see JP 2009-020639 A).
In a case where a document includes a request for reference to another document, and the document to be referred to is simply designated, a viewer needs to take a lot of trouble to search the document for the relevant portion. Therefore, it is preferable to further designate the portion to be referred to in the document. To simplify the operation to open the document to be referred to, the link information for calling up the relevant portion of the document to be referred to is preferably buried in the reference source document.
However, in a case where the author of a document has not buried such link information in the document, a viewer of the document needs to take a lot of trouble to search for the relevant portion and display the relevant portion, as described above.
The technique disclosed in JP 2013-020437 A is effective in creating a document. However, any link cannot be put to a relevant portion after a document is created. By the technique disclosed in JP 2000-035969 A, creating the link information is easier, but the link information is manually created. Therefore, creating the link information is still troublesome. The technique disclosed in JP 2014-186644 A is incapable of coping with first-time viewing of a target document By the technique disclosed in WP 2009-020639 A, a relevant document can be detected, but it is not possible to determine which portion in the document has the highest degree of association.